THE SEVENTH-CENTURY KINGDOM 105recitation during mass on the feast day of the saint. Braulio also had
his archdeacon, Eugenius, later to be Bishop of Toledo (646-657)
write the prayers for the mass. The probable text of these has sur-
vived, as has a hymn in honour of Aemilian, which may also be the
work of Eugenius.
In the Life various local aristocrats are mentioned, qualified by the
titles Senator or Curial, a term in Late Roman usage equivalent more
or less to town councillor. Some of these men are named and some
of these, such as Sicorius or Tuentius, appear to be indigenous; that
is to say of neither Roman nor Gothic origin, and this may hint at the
survival of a continuing Cantabrian nobility. Other senators have
Roman names, such as Honorius and Nepotianus. The latter is of
especial interest, as there appears to have been an important Roman
aristocratic family that bore this name living across the Pyrenees in
southern Aquitaine, one of whose members was Master of the Sol-
diers in Spain in 46U^9 The curials mentioned, such as Maximus, may
have been members of the urban senates of the few towns, such as
Calahorra, that existed in the region, but it is possible that both titles,
of senator and of curial, were by the later sixth century basically
honorifics retained by families that had once formally been of those
ranks in the Roman local government structure. Such titles have
already been encountered in the pages of the Lives of the Fathers of
Merida in stories that refer to senators in Lusitania, and there has
been much unresolved argument as to what extent, if at all, Roman
urban senates still survived in a period when most of their former
functions can be found being exercised by Visigothic counts and
others.^30 The balance of probability favours the disappearance of the
institutions but the survival of the titles. However, from the Life of St
Aemilian we do learn of the existence in the sixth century of a most
unusual body that was actually functioning, called the Senate of
Cantabria.^31 Whether such an institution existed in the Roman period
or whether it was the peculiar creation of the disturbed times of the
fifth and sixth centuries, a form of local self-government established
by the senatorial and curial families of the region, is unknown. Its
nature and functions are unclear, as are the geographical limits of its
authority. The term 'Cantabria' is now used to refer to the area of the
Cantabrian mountains, in central northern Spain. However, there are
indications in the Life that in Braulio's day the word could also be
used of parts of the upper Ebro valley. Whatever the answers to these
questions might be, the existence of the institution and the lives of